When this skin
was young and ironed,
well it fit,
like new things do;

that was then
but now I find
the cracks within
are showing through.

She loosens on tiptoe
the latch of her window,

slides upward the sash
and the shine of the moon

pours over the sill,
like it's rushing downhill

like a silver stream,
flooding her room.

A certain song the sea wind knows
it sends thru puckered lips,

like kisses blown, across the bows
of drowsing sailing ships;

and stirs their sleepy sails
from their slumber with it's tune,

unfurls their folded petals
and brings them back in bloom.

There was an old world
that turned on it's head,

and turned out it’s pockets
and shook out the dead,

and shook off the living
and all of their stuff

til' all there was left
it considered enough,

and all there was left
was a world upsidedown,

and wind and whatever
had roots in the ground,

and fish with a warning
to stay where they be,

down under the waves
of the shookabout sea.

Somebody bundled
it into a clock
and slung it up high on a wall,

with numbers
like bars between us,
where there had been nothing before;

before,
my days had come open,
open and endless like sky,

but boxed on the wall
there looked no room for all
of the rest of my lifetime and I.

Leaning on the grass
like the late September breeze,

she traces as a path,
the pattern pressed into my knees

to where the lines are thickest,
finds my fondest memories,

and softly drops her kisses
like the falling autumn leaves.

There's a face at the window,
an old one I don't know,

I do hope he's not slow
to answer my knock;

It's late in the evening,
it's christmas and freezing,

I think he stopped breathing,
well ain't that my luck.  :0/

If by chance
your prayers be answered
ever, could I trouble you;

whilst your palms
be pressed together
and fair is fortune's mood;

could I trouble you to pray
there some time soon will come a day
your need of prayer is gone away,

without appearing rude?

Lonely, like the ancient ocean
flooding fast upon the sand

past a fading line of footprints,
ankle deep in surf she stands

casting wishes on the water
like a sprinkling of snow,

light they land but moments after,
melt into the waves, and go..

They said  'Above us,
rising soon,

will be a shining
supermoon,

with the sharpest
shine for years'.

We raised our blinds.
The sky closed hers..

On the first hour of my first day
in the front trench I fell;

'Get up,' bawled Sergeant Major,
'and stand eye to eye with hell,

and look ye on the plucky dead
whose chests swell out with pride';

but t'was the rats that swelled them
as they plucked them from inside..

Death stirs all ways like the wind
like something getting up to go,

and like the wind death doesn't
leave anywhere alone,

but where it is he travels with
whoever take his guiding hand,

gladly will I wait until
                     I die to understand ..

The Slow Starter (1958) - poem by Louis Macneice.


A watched clock never moves, they said;
Leave it alone and you'll grow up.
Nor will the sulking holiday train
Start sooner if you stamp your feet.
  He left the clock to go its way;
  The whistle blew, the train went gay.

Do not press me so, she said;
Leave me alone and I will write
But not just yet, I am sure you know
The problem. Do not count the days.
  He left the calender alone;
  The postman knocked, no letter came.

O never force the pace, they said;
Leave it alone, you have lots of time,
Your kind of work is none the worse
For slow maturing. Do not rush.
  He took their tip, he took his time,
  And found his time and talent gone.

Oh you have had your chance, it said;
Left it alone and it was one.
Who said a watched clock never moves?
Look at it now. Your chance was I.
  He turned and saw the accusing clock
  Race like a torrent round a rock.



Louis Macneice

Carrickfergus (1937) - poem by Louis Macneice.


I was born in Belfast between the mountain and the gantries
To the hooting of lost sirens and the clang of trams;
Thence to Smoky Carrick in County Antrim
Where the bottle-neck harbour collects the mud which jams

The little boats beneath the Norman castle,
The pier shining with lumps of crystal salt;
The Scotch quarter was a line of residential houses
But the Irish quarter was a slum for the blind and halt.

The brook ran yellow from the factory stinking of chlorine,
The yarn mill called it's funeral cry at noon;
Our lights looked over the lough to the lights of Bangor
Under the peacock aura of a drowning moon.

The Norman walled this town against the country
To stop his ears to the yelping of his slave
And built a church in the form of a cross but denoting
The list of Christ on the cross in the angle of the nave.

I was the rectors son, born to the Anglican order,
Banned for ever from the candles of the Irish poor;
The Chichesters knelt in marble at the end of a transept
With ruffs about their necks, their portion sure.

The war came and a huge camp of soldiers
Grew from the ground in sight of our house with long
Dummies hanging from gibbets for bayonet practice
And the sentry's challenge echoing all day long;

A Yorkshire terrier ran in and out by the gate-lodge
Barred to civilians, yapping as if taking affront;
Marching at ease and singing 'Who Killed **** Robin?'
The troops went out by the lodge and off to the Front.

The steamer was camouflaged that took me to England-
Sweat and khaki in the Carlisle train;
I thought that the war would last for ever and sugar
be always rationed and that never again

Would the weekly papers not have photos of sandbags
And my governess not make bandages from moss
And people not have maps above the fireplace
With flags on pins moving across and across-

Across the hawthorn hedge the noise of bugles,
Flares across the night,
Somewhere on the lough was a prison ship for Germans,
A cage across their sight.

I went to school in Dorset, the world of parents
Contracted into a puppet world of sons
Far from the mill girls, the smell of porter, the salt-mines
And the soldiers with their guns.




Louis Macneice

Prayer Before Birth (1944) - Poem by Louis Macneice


I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.

I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.

I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they ****** by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.

I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.

I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
******* like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise **** me.



Louis Macneice

Snow (January 1935) - Poem by Louis Macneice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes –
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands –
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.


Louis Macneice..

Autobiography (september 1940) - Poem by Louis MacNeice

In my childhood trees were green
And there was plenty to be seen.

Come back early or never come.

My father made the walls resound,
He wore his collar the wrong way round.

Come back early or never come.

My mother wore a yellow dress;
Gentle, gently, gentleness.

Come back early or never come.

When I was five the black dreams came;
Nothing after was quite the same.

Come back early or never come.

The dark was talking to the dead;
The lamp was dark beside my bed.

Come back early or never come.

When I woke they did not care;
Nobody, nobody was there.

Come back early or never come.

When my silent terror cried,
Nobody, nobody replied.

Come back early or never come.

I got up; the chilly sun
Saw me walk away alone.

Come back early or never come..


Louis Macneice.

There once was a man
with the gravest of frowns,

hung like a ham
by the folk of his town

who wanted to see
if his sad mouth might be

any happier turned upsidedown ..

There's beauty in words,
but often I find
more in the ones I have heard
than in mine;

more in the sound
of the ones I have read,
than those at the tip
of the tongue in my head..

Easy flow the waters
of the river passing by,

though we straighten them with walls
and narrow them in time,

and lace them up with bridges
to bind them where they lay,

still the waters, like a lifetime,
slip their bonds and pass away..

Down by the sea
where the marram grass grows
there's a ******* the beach
in a rusting boat
with a tablecloth sail
and it's rudder broke
and her eyes are an ocean wide..

This morning at daybreak
and half awake still
he bundled his memories
on to a stretcher
and carried them up atop
Cothelstone hill
and sorted them through
for the moment he met her;

the memories bandaged,
the ones with bruised limbs,
he laid on the heather
like hospital beds
but the one of their first kiss
he threw to the wind
and asked the wind's help
for to help him forget..

Blowing silence
like a bugle
to announce his dismay

he got set
to make a statement
without speaking for a day

but his mother
just assuming
he had nothing much to say

sent her silent
revolutionary
son outside to play;

outmaneuvered
in the kitchen
by his mother's disregard

for campaigns
of wild muteness,
the rebellion fell apart

to the sound
of scuffing shoes
and the grumble in his heart

'cause silent protest
tends to lose
when no-one's listening very hard..

She reaches on tip toe
through windows and tries
to take hold of the outside
and gather it in,

for to feel the wind
and the pull of the tides
on the shrinking inside
of a life growing thin..

Falling leaves hurry to gather
at one worn headstone after another
like a funeral party uncertain where
lies the lost loved one it grieves;;

Time and wind tug on the memory
left in this absent minded cemetery
no one comes visit but weather and me
and the dead lying under the trees

have stories nobody can read.

That was the end
of her holy affair,

when she knelt, out of habit
and felt fresh air

finding the gaps
where her gods once were

like light finds the edge of a door
when it's not shut so tight as before..

I once found the moon in a forest
of fir two hundred foot tall,
it's face being lovingly polished
by fish in a silver pool,

the water was deep like a riddle,
as dark underneath as the pine,
I swam like a thief to the middle
but that slippery silver
                        refused to be mine.

She opens a window
and hopes for the sky
to fall in from outside
and it's tailwind bring

her the moon and the clouds
lined with silver, a crowd
of the finest of stars
and a spare pair of wings..

Where are the words, the ones with sparks
to set a fire in wooden hearts
and set to work my wooden tongue
with all the wit that they impart ?

where do those words that all belong
in works of poetry come from ?
I know them only as the guests
that visit me by book and song;

my own words bear the awkwardness
of someone starting to undress
with clumsy thumbs and wooden hands
and should perhaps stay unexpressed..

There's folk on the news
on the tele tonight
and all of them
making me sad,

they're all of them
thumping on tubs tonight
and waving
American flags,

and it's not so much
the waving I mind,
or the sound
of tubs being thumped,

it's more the thought
that human kind
will thump them
for someone like Trump..

There once was a world
that stood on it's head

and wriggled and jiggled
and shook out the dead

and shook off the living
and all of their stuff

'til nothing was left
in it's pockets but fluff,

'til nothing was left
but a world upsidedown

that shakes in the wind
as it's spinning around

like a ragged old lady
with thin and threadbare

clothing she's no
longer willing to share..

And who then would have told  
of this end anyway ?
Not you, you leapt first and furthest
always, and recklessly that last time;

few enough I think remember now,
but I knew you when
we were skywide open and
kin to the blowing wind;

we were brothers you and I,
two of a different kind, we ran
and we jumped like suicides, leaving
dust trails like others leave wealth,

there were days I believed
boxes were built only to be
strung together as freight trains,  
god knows we rode all those that were;

but lately I see them used
by people frightened of
freedom also, for to
hide their worried lives inside...